February 21, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "28Pages"
-
Defending his attention-grabbing assertions that the
U.S. invasion of Iraq was an enormous mistake
facilitated by the George W. Bush administration’s
misleading of the American people, Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump this week
indirectly referred to 28
classified pages said to link the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 attacks.

“It wasn’t the
Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center. We
went after Iraq, we decimated the country, Iran’s
taking over…but it wasn’t the Iraqis, you will find
out who really knocked down the World Trade Center,
because they have papers in there that are very
secret, you may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you
will find out,” Trump said at a Wednesday campaign
event in Bluffton, South Carolina.

Trump’s
implied promise to declassify the 28 pages sets him
apart from the remaining Republican and Democratic
presidential aspirants, filling a gap created when
Rand Paul suspended his campaign.
Last summer, Paul introduced
Senate Bill 1471, which, if passed, would direct
the president to release the 28 pages, and he
pledged to release them himself if elected to the
White House. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has
also called
for their release. (Then-Senator Hillary Clinton
co-signed a
2003 letter to President Bush demanding the
release of the 28 pages, but has been silent on the
topic since.)

Jeb on the 28 Pages: From Shrugs
to Sarcasm

When asked
about the 28 pages last summer, Jeb Bush said he’d
never heard of them. This month, asked if he
would like to see the 28 pages his brother
classified, Bush
sarcastically replied, “Yeah, I’d like to see
’em. You got ’em?”

Among the
many who would like to “see ’em”: 9/11 family
members and survivors whose lawsuit against the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has
been imperiled by what former Senator Bob Graham
calls a “pervasive pattern of covering up the
role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, by all of the agencies
of the federal government, which have access to
information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s
role in 9/11.”

Vague Reference Dampens Impact

Trump’s
comments brought renewed attention to the
classified, 28-page chapter in the 2002 report of a
joint congressional intelligence inquiry into 9/11.
However, the impact would have certainly been
greater had he specifically referred to “28 pages”
rather than cryptically referencing “secret
papers”—which he did time and again on the campaign
trail, in an
interview with Fox News and during CNN’s
Thursday night town hall.

Given the
dearth of mainstream media coverage of Trump’s Saudi
Arabia reference, it’s clear his vague allusion
to “secret papers” left journalists baffled. For
example, though Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher was
among the first to report it, his brief
piece struck a snarky tone, made no reference to
the 28 pages, and concluded with a dismissive
statement that “no evidence has ever been presented
that the government of Saudi Arabia was behind the
attacks of 9/11.” Following his lead, most of
those sharing the Mediaite story on social media
ridiculed the notion that there are “secret papers”
implicating the Saudis.

However,
former Senator Graham, who co-chaired the
intelligence inquiry that produced the 28 pages, said
“they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as
being the principal financier of 9/11.” Two of the
9/11 hijackers received
financial, lodging and other assistance from a
Saudi citizen who lived in San Diego and who is
widely thought to have been an operative for the
kingdom. There are also serious questions—and a
FOIA lawsuit—swirling around a
wealthy Saudi family that had ties to Mohammed
Atta and which fled Sarasota two weeks before
9/11.

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